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While the spotlight was on the electoral process in Israel\u2014and now on the gridlock following the vote recount\u2014the Zionist occupation forces were pressing ahead with ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinians. This was not merely a smokescreen, with all eyes fixed on the elections to decide who would govern a colonial and supremacist state built on crimes against humanity. It was also an attempt to secure the votes of the settlers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On October 27, election day, the West Bank had already been facing an intensified siege against the Palestinian people for four days, with the Zionist occupation forces blocking access to neighborhoods, villages, and cities, raiding refugee camps, carrying out new home demolitions, and conducting arrests and expulsions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In Gaza, blood was also shed\u2014including that of children\u2014on that day, and the killings continued in the days that followed. Dozens of victims continue to be added, day after day, to the more than 80,000 Palestinians killed in the ongoing genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The advance of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank led the director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Roland Friedrich, to express on October 27, in a post on X, his \u201cdeep concern over the situation in Hebron.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Al-Khalil, as it is called in Arabic, is the largest city in the West Bank, with a population of 700,000 across its entire province. According to Friedrich, it was facing a \u201cnear-total blockade that severely restricted residents\u2019 freedom of movement and access to essential services.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Friedrich added in his post:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese events bring to mind alarming echoes of the mass displacement observed in the northern occupied West Bank in early 2025, where more than 34,000 Palestinian refugees\u2014from the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camps\u2014remain forcibly displaced more than a year later. [\u2026] These events are also taking place against the backdrop of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) elections, while tensions throughout the occupied West Bank remain high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The severe siege of the West Bank lasted ten days, beginning on October 23. Under the pretext of responding to an act of resistance against Zionist occupation soldiers\u2014as is customary\u2014Israel resorted to collective punishment, which, as Friedrich acknowledged in his publication, is illegal under international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In the last few days alone, according to\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/em>, more than 5,000 Palestinians from Al Khalil were displaced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is always worth remembering that peoples subjected to colonization, such as the Palestinians, have the legitimate right to resist by all means, and that the occupying power\u2014in this case, Israel\u2014has no right to self-defense, as recognized by the United Nations itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the situation worsened day by day, however, Palestinian lives did not grab the same headlines. The focus was on whether the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu, the Zionist prime minister, would be defeated or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The political gridlock continues, with his coalition having won 53 seats, compared to 48 for the opposition led by occupation general Gadi Eisenkot, one of the architects of the Dahiya Doctrine\u2014the scorched-earth strategy developed in Lebanon\u2019s Dahiya neighborhood in 2006 and applied in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n As shown in an article by Yoav Haifawi republished by the IWL-FI, titled \u201cThe Knesset Elections Expose the Crisis of Israel\u2019s Apartheid Regime<\/a>,\u201d Eisenkot\u2019s main criticism of Netanyahu\u2014as well as that of his allies\u2014is that he failed to \u201ccrush\u201d Hamas in Gaza. And the promise of this opposition is greater militarization, including mandatory conscription of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither of the two racist leaders\u2014and it is ironic that the media portrays Eisenkot as a \u201ccentrist\u201d alternative who would supposedly be better for the Palestinians\u2014achieved the majority needed to form a government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt Is Not a Question of Government<\/h2>\n\n\n\n